"Gregory J. Rosmaita" wrote:
> it is heartening (at least to me) that while we continue to work hard at
> getting quote the right stuff unquote into the W3C DOM, as well as broad
> agreement to implement the W3C DOM, that a viable alternative
> exists... yes, i know that it is, to borrow a phrase from the Americans
> with Disabilities Act, an quote undue burden unquote to fob off
> construction of a personal stylesheet onto individual users, most of whom
> neither know CSS syntax nor care to learn it,
Just to be quite clear here:
Nothing in the CSS2 Rec says that authors have to hand craft their
stylesheets in plain text editors and precludes WYSIOP content creation
tools making their stylehseets for them. That I hope is a truism.
Similarly, nothing in CSS2 requires that users have to hand craft their
stylesheets in plain text editors, by themselves. Browsers have for a long
time offered various preferences and menu items which let users adjust
various aspects of presentation. User stylesheets is a way to formalise the
interaction of these preferences with the rest of the style system, and to
allow such preferences to be shared ina common syntax between users. Think
of your browser preferences system as an authoring tool for user
stylesheets.
Of course, users can write ther own stylesheets if they want, and the fact
that CSS has a very approachable syntax helps people to make that step if
they want to.
And lastly, CSS user stylesheets benefit from the cascade. A user
stylesheet can be one line. It would be an undyue burden to force users who
don't like the current presentation to make a complete new presentation
from ground zero.
--
Chris